House to debate gay marriage bills

By Jacqueline Maley and Richard Willingham

June 18, 2012 — 3.00am

PARLIAMENT will once again be embroiled in the controversial issue of gay marriage from today, as two separate private members' bills to legalise same-sex marriage are debated in the House of Representatives, with a vote on the bills likely to come following the winter session of Parliament.

A report on the two bills, one from Labor's Stephen Jones and one from Greens MP Adam Bandt and independent Andrew Wilkie, by the House of Representatives social policy and legal affairs committee will also be tabled this morning.

Committee chair and Labor MP Graham Perrett said it was the largest committee inquiry ever held, with responses ''pretty strongly in support'' of change.

The committee used an online poll to gauge community sentiment, with 276,437 people responding - 64 per cent backed legalising same-sex marriage.

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Adam Bandt: 'Putting to a vote soon would be unhelpful and potentially set back the cause of reform.'Credit:Andrew Meares

Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt said the time was not right for a vote on the bill because of the Coalition ban on a free vote for its MPs.

''Putting to a vote soon would be unhelpful and potentially set back the cause of reform,'' Mr Bandt told The Age.

''With Labor split on the issue, until we have got Coalition members' support for the bill there is no point in recommending a vote.''

Mr Bandt said the report's process would be helpful in the current debate. ''We are in an interesting situation where Labor members aren't obliged to follow their own policy, but nonetheless have a conscience vote, but the Liberals, the party of freedom of choice and individual rights, aren't even allowing their members a conscience vote,'' he said.

Mr Bandt said he would continue to seek a Coalition co-sponsor of his bill.

Church heavyweights have been spurred into action by the issue with a letter signed by Sydney Archbishop George Pell distributed to churchgoers.

The letter, entitled ''One Man and One Woman in a Covenant of Love and Life'', states that ''legislating for same-sex marriage will change the meaning of marriage for everyone and radically reshape the cultural and social structures of our country''.

''Homosexual people are loved members of our families and parish communities, and along with other unmarried people are invited to grow in the freedom that arises from not being controlled by our sexual desires,'' the letter, signed by Archbishop Pell and others, reads.

The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen, penned a letter to parishioners that quotes Bible extracts from Genesis on the nature of marriage, and notes that ''not all can be or should be married'', including Jesus himself.

''The education of children must not be distorted by the state-imposed idea that a family can be founded on the sexual union of two men or two women as a valid alternative to that of a man and a woman,'' it says. The right to marriage does extend equally, the letter states, but only to those who are qualified.